After I mount a GFS volume, there is always a delay when I first access the
volume. I'm guessing somewhere between 30 seconds to 45 perhaps. This happens
on first access and if the node has been idle for some time.

Is this because the node needs to do some calculations, get a fresh index or
details about the storage, then it's fine?

Mike

Hi Mike,

The first access after a GFS mount will be understandably slower: It
can take a long
time to read in the resource group index and resource groups from disk.
Once they're
in memory, access to them will be fast. This should only happen after
the mount.

It's a good question, so I added it to the FAQ.

After the system has been idle for a long time, the Linux VFS will force
cached pages
to disk and free up the memory. So in theory, it might take some time
to re-read them

again. Shouldn't be nearly as long as the first access after the mount.
Regards,
Bob Peterson
Red Hat Cluster Suite